Skip to main content

In it to win it

 By Sharon C. Cooper 

Summary:

Morgan Redford, known for her privileged and carefree lifestyle, wants to make a meaningful difference by helping young adults aging out of foster care. She sets her sights on a property perfect for this cause, only to find her competition is ex-boyfriend Drake Faulkner, a Los Angeles real estate developer. Both are determined to win, but the eccentric owner insists they compete in a series of challenges. As tensions rise and past emotions resurface, Morgan and Drake must decide if they can stay focused on the prize or if their rekindled attraction will get in the way.


My thoughts:

In this book, the insertion of TikTok and reality elements feels jarring, detracting from the overall narrative. I’m not a fan of real life things in novels. I want to escape reality, not face it in literature too. The characters’ tendency to (literally) stumble through situations rivals that of Bella Swan, which is meant to be charming but often falls flat. While my determination to finish helped pull me out of a reading slump, the story felt unnecessarily stretched; it could have easily been condensed into a 300-page novel.


On a positive note, I appreciated the simplicity of the love story. It’s refreshing to see Black love portrayed in a lighthearted way, moving beyond the typical narratives of trauma that often dominate the genre. This representation is valuable and needed.


Overall, I’d rate the book a 5/10.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Tea (it’s a cautionary tale)

I wasn’t going to say anything, but I keep coming across the TikToks of the young mom who shared her experience at a certain government hospital in the city, and I just can’t keep this nightmare to myself. If you’re pregnant or plan to be and had the mindset that I did, please let me be your cautionary tale. Please. Please. PLEASE. Growing up, I had this romantic notion of giving birth where I was born. All I can say is that there’s a time and place for being sentimental, and this was not one of those times. Here begins our tale. After registering my pregnancy, I was asked where I planned to give birth. That’s when it hit me: I was pregnant and needed to figure out where to deliver. It was overwhelming, to say the least. My boyfriend was in another country, and my mom was on the other side of the country. Everyone who knew suggested either GPH (Gaborone Private Hospital) or Ramotswa if I went the government route. Everything was still up in the air—until hyperemesis came along and mad...

“Nearly everything I know about love…

I've learnt from my long-term friendships with women. When you're looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind .” - Dolly Alderton  We often focus on romantic relationships, and while that's important, we don't talk enough about the privilege of being surrounded by young women who want nothing but the best for you, who stand up and show up for you. For one reason or another, I’ve never been the luckiest in the friendship department. This isn't a sob story, but rather a love letter to the girlies (you too, Queen V and Uncle Steve) I’m currently rocking with. They are the rarest of jewels, and I consider myself blessed to have them in my life. New stages in life, such as parenthood or marriage, are usually accompanied by friendship loss, at least from what I gather. But my underrated flex is that motherhood has brought me closer than ever to my f...

Crowning Glory: Beyond the Roots

Dear Reader, when I was a little girl, I had long, relaxed hair—or at least, that’s what I’ve been told. Thanks to CPTSD and chronic migraines, my memory is notoriously unreliable. But when I moved in with my “adoptive family”, the decision was made that maintaining my hair wasn’t practical. My grandma-who’s-not-my-grandma was devastated. To this day, she still laments how beautiful my hair was, as if it were some relic lost to time. At school, prepubescent me—with a bald head—was often mistaken for a boy. That had a lasting effect on me. As I grew older, I tried to reclaim that narrative by convincing myself I wasn’t just unfeminine but rather an androgynous gothic tomboy. My beauty was so closely tied to my hair, and yet my young, impressionable self had no say in the matter. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that my looks have been a lifelong struggle, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that my hair played a significant role in this internal conflict. When I moved to New Yo...